We should have known better than to have four judges, laughed Brande Bradford when a number of entries were tied for placement in the Community Christian School (CCS) First Annual Art Contest. Brande, her husband Chris, along with Kirk and his wife Terry served as representatives of Bradford Realty Group judging the event.

The art contest, sponsored by Bradford Realty Group, was established to encourage students to develop their artistic abilities and utilize creative thinking processes as well as highlight the efforts of CCS in promoting the arts and the artistic development of their students. The four judges closely inspected all of the entries, making notes of the ones they felt demonstrated good artistic and creative abilities in the child's individual manifestations of the contest themes  Since this was a contest to judge the efforts of the children, entries which clearly exceeded the abilities of the age group were excluded from consideration.  At the end of the judging they compared notes. In the three occasions where their were ties, placement was decided by the flip of a coin.

The older winners gleamed with pride and the younger winners bounced with excitement as they received their awards. Each first, second and third place winner in the three categories received a trophy for their outstanding effort.

One second grade third place winner exclaimed "I have been in school three years, and this is the first time I have won anything!" The names of the winners are being withheld for privacy reasons. "I was surprised by the amount of talent exhibited by these children and the effort each one of them put into their renderings. Every entry deserved a First Place trophy. These kid's parents have a lot to be proud of." said Brande upon awarding the trophies.

Kirk Bradford Reviewing Entries

Entries were displayed on the 2nd floor of the atrium at Community Bible Church. CCS and Bradford Realty Group hopes the community will join with them in acknowledging the efforts of these fine students. For more information about this or other CCS events, contact Holly Phillips, Advancement Coordinator at 678-432-0191.

In the month of November, Fayette County showed some improvement over October in regards to average home sale prices. Fayette County has taken a hard hit during the current "Credit Crisis", which might be confusing to some since many wrongly assume it was only the buyers of modest homes that were taking out sub-prime loans.

The problem with comparing "average" sales prices in a slow market is a few unusually high or unusually low sales can skew all of the numbers so that they are essentially meaningless, but it is encouraging to see that the average sales price for Fayette County increased during November, although they were still well below previous levels. Prices in Clayton and Henry Counties have continued to fall. Clayton county continued its months long sloping path downward while Henry County took a nosedive from its momentary crest in October. When will all of this end? We are still not sure, but we are hoping the market will stabilize next summer with a recovery beginning the following spring. But, that is only our educated guess based on the information we have available at the moment. If you ask 10 experts you will get 10 different answers. Only time will grant rights to the lucky few to say "I told you so."